Presently, there are many social networking, blogging, and microblogging services being created and used by people worldwide. With the proliferation of smart phones and personal digital assistants that allow users to access these services via mobile devices, and with many users being subscribed to unlimited data plans, mobile devices are frequently being utilized to access the aforementioned blogging and social networking services. The increasing use of mobile devices to receive messages relating to these social networking and blogging services is placing a burden stress on existing mobile network equipment.
One such social networking site is Twitter, which is a microblogging social networking service that enables users to send and read other user messages called “tweets.” Users may select other users to follow, and when one of these followed users posts a tweet, the following user (i.e., the “follower”) is notified of the tweet. Currently, Twitter notifies followers of a followed user's tweet via email. Twitter also allows followers to receive notification of a followed user's tweet via a short message service message (SMS). This means that, for example, each time a tweet is received via a SMS, a home location register (HLR) database must be accessed in order to retrieve the location of the mobile device of the follower in order to route the SMS to the mobile device. As more users subscribe to these types of services, the burden on an HLR increases.
Another problem that arises due to the growing use of social networking and blogging services is the increasing network complexity. Currently, when a social networking message is sent from one of these services, two nodes are necessary to process and deliver the social networking message to a recipient. Specifically, one node is needed to convert the message type and another node is required to deliver the message. For example, with Twitter, a message is received at a destination network, and a short message peer-to-peer (SMPP) gateway is required in order to convert the social networking message from SMPP format to SMS format. After the message is converted to SMS format, a short message service center (SMSC) is required in order to deliver the message.
Accordingly, in light of these disadvantages, there exists a need for improved systems and methods for controlling social networking service originated message traffic.